


Crisis Unresolved

by MissIzzy



Series: Shadows on Coruscant [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: au100, Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-06
Updated: 2007-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissIzzy/pseuds/MissIzzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Late at night and the Senator has taken poison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crisis Unresolved

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the AU100 prompt #60: Drink.

It was the middle of the night and Padmé was standing in the lift, continually glancing at the indicator. When the doors opened onto Senator Okiltine's floor, she ran out and down the corridor.

She knocked instead of ringing the chime so Roos would know it was her. He opened the door just enough to admit her. "Lucky you felt the need to comm her tonight," she commented to him. If he hadn't, she might have arrived the next morning too late.

"Meesa thinkin' me can say now what poison sheesa took. Yousa hearin' about Pom-hopper liver poison?"

"All the old gods," breathed Padmé in horror. "There's no cure for that."

"Yousa humans be thinkin' that?" He looked at her in surprise.

"You know a cure?"

"Meesa already commed Motée again, tellin' her she need to be buyin' and bringin' some drugs with her, and quick as she can. Meanwhile weesa needin' to be mixin' some water with salt."

They mixed water with salt, and with any other nutrients suited for the purpose they could find in the apartment. It took both of them to manuever the Senator into drinking; she was limp and unresponsive.

Padmé ran to the door when Motée knocked. The other handmaiden burst in clutching a box and two vials. Roos took them saying "Meesa needing more water too." Padmé hurried to the kitchen to get more.

They watched as Roos mixed the drugs, dissolving the powder in the box with the liquids in the vials, diluting the results of both in water, and prepared a dose of the first drug and two of the second. He injected the both drugs into the Senator immediately, counted off ten long seconds, and gave her the second dose of the second drug. "Ten seconds more," he advised them.

Ten even longer seconds later, the Senator blinked herself into consciousness, then rolled over and vomited thick black bile all over her pillows. When she was done, she looked up and around at them all, and there was a disturbing limpness in her eyes.

"Why?" Roos asked softly. "Meesa know there bein' no way yousa can take that poison unknowingly."

That was news to the two handmaidens. They stared at their mistress in shock for several moments.

Then Padmé said, "Let's get her out of this dirty bed before we ask her such questions." So they helped her into the fresher while Roos piled the dirty linens into the recycler(even physical contact with the bile could make them sick, he said), and they helped her wash herself; her muscles were still very weak. Then they carried her into the her living area and sat her down on her couch. They sat down themselves on either side of her. She avoided looking at them. Noone said anything.

It was only some time after Roos had joined them, and they had all watch her sit there with the clear implication that they might not leave her alone again for a year's time, that Senator Okiltine said, "I just can't take it anymore. The war, the Costils and Excenils now openly trying to destroy each other, the Talstrines and the Yelninas on the brink of getting in the same way, and they keep telling me it'll be all right because the Trade Federation will abandon Naboo, but they've been saying that for over a year. And this afternoon I had a meeting with Palpatine, and I realized ten minutes in that I didn't know the man I was talking to. I felt the entire time he didn't care at all about what I was saying to him. Something's happened to him this past year, and now he's gone. They gave him too much power, and it's eaten his soul up, and now it's all he cares about."

"I'm sure he cares," said Padmé. "This is just a very hard time for him."

The Senator shook her head. "You weren't there. It didn't...never mind. Nothing makes sense anymore anyway."

"Focus yourself on some things remaining constant, milady," Motée said to her. "Among them your duty to your people. However hard, however hopeless. We can't lose you, Senator Okiltine."

"I think you can."

"No, milady, we can't," pleaded Padmé. "What will our people think if they see their leaders give in to despair? They will become convinced themselves that there is no reason to have any more hope. We all need to find it within ourselves somehow to last this time out, or we are all lost.

"Please, milady." There were tears in her eyes as she took her mistress' hand. "Please, you can't give up now."


End file.
